By Asghar Ali Mubarak
There is an old saying in diplomacy that when you hear the sound of boots, you should immediately talk of poetry. However, when the boots belong to the United States and Iran, and the ground shaking beneath them is the Strait of Hormuz, poetry will not fill a fuel tank. What is needed is something far rarer: a trusted voice, a quiet room, and the stubborn refusal to let the world burn while everyone argues about who lit the match. For the past two months, since war erupted on February 28, that voice has belonged, unexpectedly, to Pakistan. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif did not ask for this role. No country in South Asia would.
However, when your weekly oil import bill balloons from 300 Million to 800 million, a rise of 167 percent in a matter of weeks, neutrality becomes a luxury you cannot afford. The conflict between Iran and the United States, with Israel as a third actor, has not only shaken the Middle East. It has reached into every Pakistani home, every power station, every loaf of bread made costlier by expensive fuel. The numbers are stark, and they deserve to be repeated. Before the war, Pakistan was crawling toward economic recovery, a fragile but real progress after years of turbulence. Then came the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, first by Iran, then by a US naval blockade.
Twenty million barrels of oil used to pass through that narrow channel every day, a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade. Now, less than ten percent gets through. The result is not just an inconvenience. It is a quiet catastrophe. Pakistan has already defaulted on 1.4 billion in Euro bonds and 2 billion in UAE bonds. Reserves are draining. And the cabinet now meets not to plan grand projects, but to calculate how many days of fuel are left. It is against this grim arithmetic that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has been working, not as a grand strategist in a chancellery, but as a man who understands that when your house is on fire, you do not ask the firefighter about his politics.
The Prime Minister has done something remarkable. He brought Tehran and Washington to the same table in Islamabad for the first face-to-face talks since 1979. For twenty-one hours on April 11 and 12, the two sides sat in the same city, breathing the same air, speaking through Pakistani intermediaries. That alone is a historic achievement. The fact that a ceasefire was extended because of Pakistan’s direct request is another. However, let us not romanticise this. The gap between the two sides remains cavernous. Iran has presented a ten-point plan that demands monitoring of the Strait of Hormuz, the withdrawal of all US forces from the region, the lifting of every sanction, and the restoration of frozen assets.
The United States has countered with fifteen points that include ending Iran’s nuclear program, banning its missile development, and fully reopening the strait to international shipping. These are not minor disagreements. They are entire universes of mistrust. And yet, something has shifted. The parties have moved from shouting to writing. Exchange of written proposals has begun, a sign that both recognise the cost of continued conflict. The Gulf Cooperation Council, meeting in Jeddah under Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has condemned Iran’s attacks on member states. The figures are startling. Of the 4,391 missiles and drones launched by Iran since February 28, a staggering 83 percent have targeted Gulf countries, not Israel.
Saudi Arabia alone has faced 723 attacks, the UAE 2,156. This is not a distant war. It is a regional inferno. The human weight of this falls on people like the ones reading this newspaper. Pakistani families watching fuel prices rise every Friday, unsure if they can afford the journey to work. Truck drivers waiting at closed borders. A government that had finally begun to see light at the end of the tunnel, only to realise the tunnel was longer than anyone knew. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif put it plainly in a cabinet meeting: “Allah Almighty had kept our economy at a macro level, and we were on the path to recovery, but as a result of this sudden war, our efforts of the last two years have been undermined.” That is not rhetoric. That is exhaustion.
What the country has done with that unwanted role is worthy of respect. It has not taken sides. It has not grandstanded. It has simply, doggedly, refused to let the talks die. No one knows if the next round will succeed. The conditions are still far apart, and trust is a currency both sides spent long ago. But the ceasefire holds, for now. The written proposals are being read, not torn up. And in a modest building in Islamabad, a handful of exhausted diplomats are doing the only thing worth doing: they are talking. Because the alternative, a closed strait and an endless war, is not a future anyone can afford. Not Pakistan. Not the Gulf. Not the world.
(The writer is a senior journalist covering various beats, can be reached at editorial@metro-morning.com)
